SNHU · Online Higher Education

Building a product design department from zero

Director of Product Design · 2021–2023

One of the largest nonprofit online universities in the U.S. had scattered designers but no product design function (no standards, no systems, no operating model) while needing to modernize learner-facing technology at scale.

0→1Department built

7Designers led

MLCredit tool

The Context

Scattered designers, no function

SNHU needed a real product design organization: the team, the craft, and the systems, all at the same time, in an institution serving hundreds of thousands of learners.

I was hired to build it and to raise the bar on how design shows up across learner-facing products.

What I Did

Team, craft, and systems, at once

Built the Product Design department from zero: recruited the team, defined the function, and set the operating model
Led seven product designers directly within a broader org spanning graphic designers, researchers, and content creators, with a development partnership with Google
Materially boosted team productivity and satisfaction through career-ladder frameworks, mentorship, and design-operations maturity
Built multi-layered Figma design systems (architecture, motion, illustration) and the critique, design-review, and quality frameworks that held craft
Established a product-development lifecycle aligning design, product, and engineering
Led R&D for a next-generation skill-based learning platform through beta, plus an ML credit-for-prior-learning tool that halved a registrar's processing time

Selected Work

Concepts and explorations

01 / 04

Credit for Prior Learning

An ML registrar tool I directed that cut credit-processing time in half. The registrar team adopted it fast, and it showed how far AI could move a core campus workflow.

ML toolRegistrar workflowTime saved

02 / 04

Guide Me

An AI pathway system giving new students just-in-time guidance. The proof of concept showed AI and ML could turn a hard onboarding moment into a confident first step.

AI guidanceOnboardingStudent pathways

03 / 04

Adaptive Learner Environment

A flexible program pathway that adapts to each learner's interests and goals, presenting complex material in digestible steps so students learn at their own pace.

Adaptive learningPersonalizationSelf-paced

04 / 04

Empowering the Educational Support System

Tools and training that let advisors give personalized support, with a streamlined registrar experience for managing records and registration.

Advisor toolsSupport systemRegistrar UX

Walkthroughs

See it in motion

Three cuts from the Level Up pilot: the video that invited learners in, the one that onboarded them after they accepted, and a walkthrough of the platform and its AI-powered tools.

The pilot invitation

The video that recruited learners into the Level Up pilot, the pitch that earned the opt-in.

Onboarding into the pilot

What accepted learners saw next: the welcome and first steps once they were in.

Level Up and the AI learning tools

A walkthrough of the platform and the AI-powered learner experience.

Impact

A function that scaled the craft

A mature design organization built from the ground up
Meaningful productivity gains and a stronger, better-supported team
Shipped learner-facing platforms and an ML tool that cut real processing time in half

Org BuildingDesign SystemsDesign OperationsTeam LeadershipEdTechR&D